For those of you who do not know Mihael Ginghina, let me offer this brief introduction. He is currently the director for life of the ReMax cycling team, the oldest CRCA sub-team. He started racing in about 1972 or something and was in his time a feared sprinter with many wins under his belt. To find out about his wins all you have to do is say, “Hello.” He originated from Romania, which explains why he misspells Michael. My greatest regret is that I didn’t know him when he still had his Romanian accent, robbing me of opportunities to mimic him relentlessly. schmalz

What? You won!, I hate you.

Although I am not in racing shape, nor do I plan to be, I looked forward to going down to the first club race. To see familiar friendly faces I have not seen all winter, toodle around the park, and possibly see a teammate. We just added two riders to our roster increasing the chances of someone from ReMax actually being at the race. I was pleasantly surprised to see Anthony and Mark Brinken ready to race. One of our new riders, Daniel Johnson, new to the club, was disappointed to find out he had to marshal before racing. He was especially disappointed not bringing enough clothing to keep him warm while standing still blowing his whistle. That reminded me how bad of a team manager I am. My long time team mate, Mark Siega, was also there, rollerblading or marshalling, not sure what he was doing. During the warm up lap Brinken commented on how he spent most of 3 days last week, on the toilet or in bed. Anthony, looking fit commented on the lack of out door miles, and lately his workout consisted mostly of pulling a car up an incline with two college bound football players he teaches. Expectations were not very high, yet we were all in good spirits.

A 15 man break establishes itself, and of course there is no ReMax riders, luckily for us there were no Axis riders either. So for 3 plus laps it was the break against Axis with an occasional pull from one of our riders, or a CRCA rider. The other teams were sitting in or getting to the front to disrupt the chase. With 2 laps to go Anthony tried an unsuccessful solo bridge to the break, however, it did help spark the field putting and end to the large break. In the end it was Axis again at the front leading out Karl, with a “K”. But the long morning’s effort at the front was a bit too much for them, and their lead out was a bit to slow. Anthony was in a good spot one rider behind Karl. Ant was not planning on starting his sprint so early, but when the Axis train ran out of steam, he decided to jump at the bottom of the hill by the entrance to the boathouse. He established a gap that he held to the line for the win.

Mehi ‘leads out’ teammate Alessio.

Brinken rolled in shortly after the race and said to Anthony, “what! you won! I hate you”. Afterwards, the 5 of us rushed to our usual breakfast spot, made fun of Mark Siega, swapped off season stories, and planned to do another race together one of these days.